The Greatest Love Story

John 3:16 NKJV

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Every where we turn today we see tragedies and most of what we see and hear is bad news. You cant even turn on the Television set without seeing all the bad in this old world. We are surrounded by bad news. But God has given us good news in the mist of all the bad news.

You know this is a sad and sick culture in which we live in, when people think they can find peace in pills, when people try to eat their way to ecstasy, when people try to drink their way to pleasure.

But I know were a poor man can get rich and were a sick man to get well and were ignorant man can get wise. and where a bad man can be made good and a dead man to come to life in Jesus Christ.

John 3:16 NKJV

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

There is no other passage in all of the Bible that says so much to so many in so few words.

Here in this small passage we have a Volume in a Verse and an ocean in a dew drop.

It is here we have the worlds greatest love story. It is even the anthem of redemption.

Read John 3:16 again

Some have said about this verse is to fair to touch and that its too good to be true and that it is to far away to be real.

And the cynics are asking “Is it so? And if is so, so what!”

Well let me be so bold this morning and say that is is SO!

God’s love for you is REAL, it had no beginning and it will have no end.

It can not change because God can not change, God can not change for the better nor can He change for the worst.

He can not change for the better because how can He get better when He is the embodiment of the best. And He can not change for the worst because there is nothing in His character that can make Him to become worst.

So we just join with the Hebrew writer and say

Hebrews 13:8 NKJV

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Jesus is REAL!

His Love is Everlasting!

The truth is, is that God does not love us because we are lovely or lovable.

His love does not exist based on our character but His character.

God does not love us because we are valuable but we are valuable because God love us.

God does not love us because Jesus died for us, but Jesus died for us because God loves us.

His love for us is stronger that sin and deeper than sorrow.

It is the “Worlds Greatest Love Story”

It is an Anthem of Love and this anthem is written in the Key of B, Believe and Be Saved.

Now of course within this Anthem there are Four Movements or Stages.

The Cause

The Cost

The Condition

The Consequences

So this morning lets take a closer look at them.

The Cause of Salvation - “For God so Loved the World”

For God - He is the cause. Salvation comes by no other means. Salvation is caused by God.

God's rich, free, sovereign grace. No other source of salvation to guilty man.

1. There is no power in man to save himself. A dead body cannot walk; nor can a dead soul move by its own will.

2. There is nothing to attract love in a dead, corrupting carcase, and there is nothing to attract God's love in a dead, corrupting soul.

The Cost of Salvation - “that He Gave”

Several years ago, there was 14 year-old girl (Laura Montero) whose appendix burst while she and her family vacationed on a cruise ship off the Baja Coast. The ship was hundreds of miles from help, and the crew sent out a distress call looking for the nearest surgical unit.

The USS Ronald Reagan was about 500 miles away - and they answered the call. The Carrier was in the midst of training exercises - but the crew of 6000 stopped and turned its ship around and steamed 250 miles through the night to get within helicopter transport range.

Laura was airlifted on board and doctors performed the life-saving surgery.

The cost: 2.5 million dollars per day. (from an article by Lisa Mikitarian)

Two and half million dollars! That’s a lot of money.

How’s that family ever going to pay for that?

They’re not.

The cost is way too high.

But the US government believed this little girl was worth saving, so gave her a FREE gift of life.

Two and half million dollars!

That’s a lot of money, but God paid a much higher price to obtain our allegiance:

"For God so loved the World that He... (gave His only begotten Son)."

The Condition of Salvation - “whosoever believes in Him”

Acts 16:19-32

Acts 16:30 NKJV

And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

"What must I do to be saved?" is a question of no small importance.

It indicates that men are lost. It implies that there is something about a man that would cause God to bar him from heaven.

It indicates that this condition of being lost is something that needs to be changed.

It implies that there is a consequence for not being saved - and that this consequence is something to be feared and avoided.

This Jailer, who only a few hours before had scorned the message Paul and Silas preached, now invites them to speak to him about the way of salvation.

Their songs of praise had tendered his heart and the earthquake had put a fear of their God into his soul. Trembling, Luke records, he fell down before those men of God, brought them out of the prison, and asked, "What must I do to be saved?"

How that question is answered can mean the difference between heaven and hell.

It would be hard to find a statement in the Bible that more clearly presents the way of salvation than Paul and Silas' response.

Acts 16:31 NKJV

So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."

It shows how anxious Paul was to make the way of salvation clear.

"Believe" was the sole condition Paul put forth as the means of being saved.

The issue in salvation is not what we give to God, but what He has given to us.

Salvation is His gift to you. And so “Whosoever, puts faith in Him (Jesus) will be saved.”

The Consequences of Salvation - “will not perish but have everlasting life.”

This part of the verse gives us a two part path, two different roads, two difference eternal destinations.

One road leads to Perish Avenue

One road leads to Everlasting Blv.

The truth is according to God’s word, every single human being will spend eternity in one of these two places.

The consequence of salvation brings with it a new spiritual address. A new residence, a new life, a new place to call home.

John 3:16 NKJV

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.